big apples are still just apples.

hello bloggie.
i've missed you.
i know i've been playing hard to get, only coming here like once every seventeen months or so. why do we hurt the ones we love, hm?

anyways, my personal life, in case you were unaware, has taken some drastic turns in the past few months. fate has seen me uprooted from my comfortable mid-western rut and transplanted to the bustling east coast.

if you'd care to know, things are going well, albeit slowly.
the darling girlfriend and i are subletting now, as we probably will be for another month until we can afford to move into our own pad.
our roommates are fine as far as roommates go, i guess. still, i avoid them whenever i can. darting out only when everything seems quiet, i'm like some nocturnal rodent.

i transferred up here with my company, so i didn't need to job hunt on my arrival. that was nice. but this city is hella expensive, so i got a second job for fun and profit... mostly the profit.

when we moved out here i only brought about 8 t-shirts, 2 work shirts, a pair of shorts and a pair of slacks. utterly spartan. (except my gameboy, and my psp, and my kendle, and a sketchbook, and a handful of art supplies. i couldn't be expected to come up here devoid of entertainment!)
the handful of art supplies has been a trial, sort of.
i left all my rapidiographs in a box back in ohio, and i've been missing them sorely ever since. microns travel a lot better so that's what i brought, but the lines just don't love me the way rapidiograph lines do. and i wasn't here a week before my 005 was giving out on me.
i don't have any color media either.
which isn't a huge deal, still, i guess it's one of those "you'll never miss it until it's gone" sort of deals.

but enough talk! let's look at some sketches!

^this is the oldest sketch i have to show off. i doodled this months ago, but i took forever to fill in his word balloon. i still don't really think i nailed it, but i guess i got sick of waiting around.

^ this is a self portrait i did just after i arrived at my new job. the work load was a little underwhelming.
^bigfoot! again!
^i don't know what that pirate has to do with that priest, but the priest seems awful nervous about it all... ^a collection of sketches. they aren't all on a single page like this image suggests. i combined them using computer trickery! that y u no guy is harder to draw than he looks! he's like a peanuts character, it seems easy enough, but one millimeter off and the whole thing looks wrong. go figure.

^this is the 'watermark' image i was putting on my resume.

^you may have noticed my new banner. and if you didn't, well, i made a new banner for myself! god knows it was time. the old one said 2010 on it. it's discombobulating to be in a new city, trying to get accustomed to a new(ish) job and town and all of that. i don't feel complete, without a space to call my own, with most of my friends, family and worldly goods 900 miles away. to honor that feeling i drew this. it's very much how i feel right now.

i want to try and start up posting again.
but if you cast your mind back to earlier in this very post you may recall there was some mention of a second job. so i don't know that i can really promise much.

static shock.

i really need to get back into the swing with flash.
i've been distracted of late and haven't kept up my tinkering, but how will i ever learn if i don't keep me nose in it?
exactly!

so i thought i would doodle up some cartoony heads.
for those of you following this blog (mom), i mentioned forever ago that i had done a little wolverine animation and that the file was just a bit larger than 'great expectations.' i used imported gif files, since gifs don't have backgrounds (jpgs and the like all came with that white box around them).
for this round i want to get things ready to go in illustrator and them import them to flash.
i have a coworker who knows flash a lot better than i do, and he thinks i'm a bit mad for doing the two fisted two program approach.
i'm inclined to believe him.
but i don't have the hang of drawing in flash yet...



^i drew this guy first.



^this i drew this guy to be his polar opposite.

i don't have a real good story idea yet.
i was thinking that the smiles guy is in a remake of a movie that grumpy was in decades ago. or some such thing.

doodles from the window seat.

hi there gang.
well, the first post is always the tricky one isn't it?
i wish i had something cooler to show off up front. to be honest i'm a little under the weather just now, so it's lucky you're getting anything at all.

i stopped carrying my gameboy on the bus and switched back to a little sketchbook.
these are all done with an underdrawing of design markers, and inked with microns.



^i don't have anything interesting to say about these faces.



^this guy originates from a story where he eats things through the black hole in his chest. i'll elaborate on that later.



^this is some strange monkey man who works in a mailroom some where. i don't have a backstory for him.



^i felt like drawing a scott pilgrim/anime girl. i named her 'annie may,' have nine billion people thought of that before i did? i'm guessing so. while i was finishing up her drawing an elderly gentleman asked me to draw a portrait of his elderly friend. i had to respectfully decline.



^no design makers on her, just went straight for the inks. i'm sort of biting ross cambell's style in this one, and that's being generous to me, it's a pale imitation really. if you sort of like it and you don't know who ross is, look him up, i'm not a fraction of the artist he is. no false modesty, he's a monster at drawing ladies.



^i love this guy. fat cartoon guys are just so much fun to draw! he looks like he's about to say something important, but i confess, i have no idea what it is.



^a little mega man fan art.



^she's in progress. that big blue dot in her right eyebrow is from when i fell asleep on the bus with my sketchbook open and the pen in my hand just sat on the page for a few seconds.

and that will do it for this time around.
i've got another update coming up on friday. tuesday and friday are my update days. be sure to check in for ronald too though, you can expect his updates on sunday and thursday.